How to Die in Peru by Kendra Langdon Juskus

Peel your fear like a fruit,and the lemon-eyed monkeys will come.One will trade its terror with you,sinking the teeth of itin your wrist. From that point, think only of dying.

Take a river boat from Yurimaguas to Iquitos.Follow the rasped rumor of pink dolphinson muddy waters.Pour each outrageous sunsetover your hands your armsthe hair of the one you lovelike grenadine.

Do not let your death out of your sight.

In lifting the whiskers of a coconutto your lips or licking mango juicefrom the inside of your elbow,do not lose your grip on your death.Do not lose your taste for it,when the siete raices in the brown bottledrags its nails down your throateach night on the boatwhere everyone cocoons in their hammocksand no one else thinks of your death. You must not forget it.

Do not lend it, in the neon nightof Iquitos, to the American businessmenor the Indian girls on their arms,the artists hawking their heartswork on the river flats:do not give it away, they have their own deaths to die.

Hold it, hold itin your mouth like a day-glowPeru Libre, like the toast given before the Libre,to the future.

KENDRA LANGDON JUSKUS is a writer and editor whose poetry has appeared in Literary Mama, Ruminate, Fifth Wednesday Journal, and the collection City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness (UChicago Press). She is an associate poetry editor at BOAAT and lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina.